Know your medicine

Dear Diary,

I have not taken medical leave since I graduated from NUS. Not even during my housemanship in TTSH, though I did visited the doctors 3 - 4 times throughout this 4-year span, declining a couple of MCs along the way. However, since I joined my current company in August 2008 (1 yr 3 mths ago), I haven't seen a doc. So with a persistent tussis, rhinorrhea and pharyngitis, I popped by a clinic this morning which was part of my company's medical plan. The clinic was quite empty which I did not expect since today is a Monday morning. So I sat in the couch and waited for consultation.

When it came, it was a bad case-study. The 40+ year-old doctor just went on to do all his usual diagnostic procedures without informing me what was the final diagnosis or what he was doing... poking all those probes into my facial orifices. There was hardly any doctor-patient communication at all. Eventually, I asked him outright what's wrong with me... He seemed a little shocked that I asked as if I should trust him entirely. Then with some irritated reluctance, he mumbled something like it is about your nose. Obviously, I knew that too.

Then came the major blooper when his clinic assistant went through with me what that doc prescribed...

To finish faithfully:
Amoxycillin 500mg bd x 3/7
Amoxclav 625mg bd x 3/7
Prednisolone 15mg bd x 3/7
Drixoral bd x 3/7

To take when necessary:
Beacodyl 10ml tds prn

You can see some of the drug-related errors there with drug duplication clearly obvious. Besides I don't think I had any exudates at my tonsils or hyperpyrexia or absence of tussis, and no tender or painful anterior cervical adenopathy when he did that examination... I can't possibly have GABHS, so why the antibiotics? Why duplicate amoxycillin too? That will make it 1000mg amoxycillin bd which is clearly unnecessary. 30mg oral systemic steriods per day for minor inflammation (probably just erythema around the pharynx?) and no asthmatic symptoms?

Told me to go back 3 days later for follow-up so that he can earn more money from my viral infection? Hmmm... probably not going back to that clinic anymore. I did not tell him that I am a pharmacist, albeit a non-practising one... hee...

In short, know your medication... you wouldn't want to be dosed wrongly or given the wrong medications, subjecting yourself to excessive drowsiness, frequent diarrhoea and antibiotic resistance in future.

Check with the nearby pharmacist today! =P

God Bless,

Andrew